World-Building

Hey guys! Today I have something really fun that I want to show you. If you’ve joined in for the fun over in Divine Reads, then you’ve seen a little bit more of this, but I really wanted you guys to see what it’s like when you’re world building. It’s more than just creating a set of characters and a setting in which for them to live—I also had to create the world itself, which meant creating a map for my druids and humans to live out their lives.

It all started when I was writing Cedwig. I realized that I had no idea what this world really looked like, in terms of a map. I didn’t know where everything was, in relation to the other. I knew Coetir took place on an island, but what existed beyond that? Obviously, there was more. The world couldn’t only have one tiny little island as its only land. That wouldn’t do. Besides, Cedwig was already in the works. Dwr was conceptualized. There was more to be done!

So, I opened up the Paint program on my laptop, and I made this: 

My mother refers to it as a turtle going in for a piece of lettuce. Some of the information on it isn’t even correct, and nothing is to scale. It was only a way for me to remember which direction everything was, and to not confuse myself when it came right down to it.

Well, then I took up drawing. I even worked on the map for AC Schafer’s The Wraith and the Wielder, after a while. But this was what I got, the first time I started working on my Druid World Map:

Again, I had scale issues. Part of the world, part that I really need to be there, didn’t fit on the page. But I was also drawing on a smaller size paper than I probably should’ve been.

See, Anialych needs to fit on the bottom there. There’s a whole book based on those people, but their land didn’t even fit on the page. How rude of me. And I really hated drawing trees like that. After a while, my hand cramped, and I decided that there had to be a better way. (check out Schafer’s map, if you want to see what I eventually landed on doing)

Here’s what I ended up with next:

Well, at least the scale is mildly better. Nothing else really is. Things aren’t in the right places, the lake looks like a bean, and I went color happy with my markers. Things aren’t done with the right pens, and some things just don’t make sense the way I drew them, when you take the stories into account.

Oy, more work to be done.

And I’m still not finished, if I’m being honest. I still need trees, and I screwed up a cluster of mountains on my latest version, and I *still* haven't fixed the lake. But hey, the mountains are a more appropriate scale and the islands look good. Besides, I’m a work in progress too, and I don’t need the map to be completed for another year. It's just been a fun project for me to get into when I need a break from staring at a computer.

I just thought you all might like to see how something goes from an idea to a scribble, and from a scribble to a halfway completed project, something like this:

I'll get better at this, I swear.

Stick with me and I’ll show you the final before its released to the rest of the world, but if you want better updates, don’t forget to join in the fun at Divine Reads!

[love]

{Rani D.}